[media-credit name=”Steve Peterson, Special to The Denver Post” align=”aligncenter” width=”495″][/media-credit]

This is a train station? Union Station gets glammed up for MCA/Denver's Luminocity Gala.

The history books let us know that when it opened in 1870, Denver’s Union Station was regarded as the gateway to the West and trains were considered “the only respectable way to travel from city to city or across the Great Plains.”

Time takes its toll, though, and the grand terminal was getting a little raggedy around the edges before the Denver City Council created the Denver Union Station Project Authority and work began on the largest transportation redevelopment project in North America: A $500 million undertaking that will not only restore Union Station’s faded glory but develop the surrounding area into an urban masterpiece with six pedestrian plazas, shops, restaurants, water features, public art and more. Phased openings are to begin in 2013.

Union Station, then, may have seemed like an unlikely venue for one of the most glamorous and trendy events in town, the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Luminocity Gala. But one person’s “oh, I don’t think so” is another’s “we are going to blow everyone’s socks off!”

And “wow!” it was on Oct. 27 when museum director Adam Lerner and event chair Bart Spaulding stood proudly by as a capacity crowd entered through a registration tent and filed into the main terminal, down a walkway defined by shimmering Mylar streamers, to the stairs that would lead them to the second-floor overlook where cocktails were served and a silent auction conducted before everyone went back downstairs for a seated dinner.

That it would be a sparkling affair was established with the embossed-silver invitations designed by Ellen Bruss, who, with her husband, Mark Falcone, donated the land on which MCA/Denver sits. Falcone, president of the MCA board, also is the founder and chief executive officer of Continuum Partners, the master developer, with East West Partners, of the new construction at Union Station.

Bruss also worked with the Perfect Petal to transform the main terminal, with its rows of high-backed benches, into a glittering, yet softly-lit, space that was intimate and inviting. Dinner tables, where guests enjoyed orange and beet carpaccio salads, followed by beef tenderloin and twice-baked baby potatoes from Three Tomatoes Catering, were covered with sheets of Mylar, candles and flowers.

A tradition at this event is the tequila toast that is offered just as the live auction begins. Tequila Corrido provided the samples this year; director Yuri Kato of the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based True Blue Imports was there to get a read on how everyone liked it.

The party favors were the dessert: bags filled with lemon, chocolate, vanilla and pistachio macarons that guests received as they waited for the valets to fetch their cars.

Author Helen Thorpe is a member of the MCA board and got more than a few double-takes from those who weren’t quite sure if that was indeed her underneat that silver wig. Thorpe and her husband, Gov. John Hickenlooper, were honorary chairmen of the fundraiser with Mayor Michael Hancock and his wife, vocalist Mary Louise Lee.

Bruss and Falcone also were members of the host committee, along with a group that included Three Tomatoes co-owner Joanne Katz and her husband, Ron; District Attorney Mitch Morrissey and his wife, Maggie; Jean and Douglas Smooke; Tina Walls; Vince Abrue; Amber and Michael Fries; Ellie Caulkins; Lu and Dr. Chris Law; and MCA founder Sue Cannon.

In a neat coincidence, MCA trustee Philae Dominick, also a host committee member, was attending a museum gala on the same day that her daughter, Philae Knight, had her picture in the New York Times for having been a guest at the opening of Carsten Holler’s funhouse exhibition at the New Museum in NYC.

Carol and Dr. Rick Abrams were there to support their son and daughter-in-law, Brian and Nora Burnett Abrams; Nora is the associate curator at the MCA. Board member Dean Prina put together a table that included fellow board member Mark Tompkins; Denver Scholarship Foundation director Cindy Abramson and her husband, John; Caz Matthews; Catherine Goodwillie and Blue Bonnet restaurant owner Gary Mobell.

Study after study has shown that when it comes to charitable fundraisers, Denver has more per capita than any comparably sized city in the nation. Joanne Davidson has been covering them for The Denver Post since 1985, coming here from her native California where she'd spent the previous seven years as San Francisco bureau chief for U.S. News & World Report magazine.